Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
incident deserves commemoration. In April, 1883, Gladstone brought in an
Affirmation Bill, permitting Members of Parliament (as witnesses in
Law-Courts were already permitted) to affirm their allegiance instead of
swearing it. On the 26th of April he moved the Second Reading of the
Bill in the finest speech which I have ever heard. Under the existing
system (which admitted Jews to Parliament, but excluded Atheists), to
deny the existence of God was a fatal bar, but to deny the Christian
Creed was no bar at all. This, as Gladstone contended, was a formal
disparagement of Christianity, which was thereby relegated to a place of
secondary importance. And then, on the general question of attaching
civil penalties to religious misbelief, he uttered a passage which no
one who heard it can forget. "Truth is the expression of the Divine
Mind; and, however little our feeble vision may be able to discern the
means by which God may provide for its preservation, we may leave the
matter in His hands, and we may be sure that a firm and courageous
application of every principle of equity and of justice is the best
method we can adopt for the preservation and influence of Truth."
The Bill was lost by a majority of three, recreant Liberals again
helping to defeat the just claim of a man whom they disliked; and
Bradlaugh did not take his seat until the new Parliament in 1886
admitted, without a division, the right which the old Parliament had
denied. Meanwhile, a few of us, actuated by the desperate hope of
bringing the clergy to a right view of the controversy, printed
Gladstone's speech as a pamphlet, and sent a copy, with a covering
letter, to every beneficed clergyman in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
One of the clergy thus addressed sent me the following reply, which has
ever since been hoarded among my choicest treasures:
June 16th, 1883.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have received your recommendation to read carefully the speech of
Mr. Gladstone in favour of admitting the infidel Bradlaugh into
Parliament. I did so, when it was delivered, and I must say that
the strength of argument rests with the Opposition. I fully expect,
in the event of a dissolution, the Government will lose between 50
and 60 seats.
Any conclusion can be arrived at, according to the premises laid
down. Mr. G. avoided the Scriptural lines and followed his own. All
parties knew the feeling of the country on the subject, and,
notwithstanding the bullying and majority of Gladstone, he was
defeated.
Before the Irish Church was robbed, I was nominated to the Deanery
of Tuam; but, Mr. Disraeli resigning, I was defrauded of my just
right by Mr. Gladstone, and my wife, Lady ---- ----, the only
surviving child of an Earl, was sadly disappointed, but there is a
just Judge above. The letter of nomination is still in my
possession.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
---- ----, D.D. and LL.D.
One is often asked if Gladstone had any sense of humour. My simple and
sufficient reply is that, when he had read this letter, he returned it
to my hands with a knitted brow and flashing eyes, and this indignant
question: "What does the fellow mean by quoting an engagement entered
into by my predecessor as binding on me?"
The good fortune, which had so signally attended Gladstone's campaign
against Lord Beaconsfield, seemed to desert him as soon as the victory
was won. The refusal of the House to follow his lead in Bradlaugh's case
put heart of grace into his opponents, who saw thus early in the new
Parliament a hopeful opening for vicious attack. The Front Opposition
Bench, left to its own devices, would not have accomplished much, but it
was splendidly reinforced by the Fourth Party--a Party of Four--Lord
Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, Sir John Gorst, and Mr.
Arthur Balfour. Some light has been cast by recent memoirs on the mutual
relations of the Four; but beyond question the head and front of the
Party was Lord Randolph. That ingenious man possessed a deadly knack of
"drawing" Gladstone, as the boys say. He knew the great man's
"vulnerable temper and impetuous moods,"[34] and delighted in exercising
them. He pelted Gladstone with rebukes and taunts and gibes, and the
recipient of these attentions "rose freely." There was something rather
unpleasant in the spectacle of a man of thirty playing these tricks upon
a man of seventy; but one could not deny that the tricks were extremely
clever; and beyond doubt they did a vast deal to consolidate the
performer's popularity out of doors. It is not too much to say that, by
allowing himself to be drawn, Gladstone made Lord Randolph.
The most formidable enemy of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
was Parnell; and, when he joined forces with the Fourth Party and their
adherents, the conjunction was disastrous to Liberalism. He figures in
Lord Morley's "Life" of Gladstone as a high-souled and amiable patriot.
I always thought him entirely destitute of humane feeling, and a bitter
enemy of England. I remember the late Lord Carlisle, then George Howard
and Member for East Cumberland, gazing at Parnell across the House and
quoting from _The Newcomes_--"The figure of this garcon is not
agreeable. Of pale, he has become livid." A lady who met him in a
country house wrote me this interesting account of him:
"I cannot exaggerate the impression he made on me. I never before felt
such power and magnetic force in any man. As for his eyes, if he looks
at you, you can't look away, and, if he doesn't, you are wondering how
soon he will look at you again. I'm afraid I have very little trust in
his goodness--I should think it a very minus quantity; but I believe
absolutely in his strength and his power of influence. I should be sorry
if he were my enemy, for I think he would stop at nothing."
At the General Election of 1880, Irish questions were completely in the
background. The demand for Home Rule was not taken seriously, even by
Mr. John Morley,[35] who stood unsuccessfully for Westminster. Ireland
was politically tranquil, and the distress due to the failure of the
crops had been alleviated by the combined action of Englishmen
irrespective of party. But during the summer of 1880 it was found that
the Irish landlords were evicting wholesale the tenants whom famine had
impoverished. To provide compensation for these evicted tenants was the
object of a well-meant but hastily drawn "Disturbance Bill," which the
Government passed through the Commons. It was rejected by an
overwhelming majority in the Lords, and the natural consequence of its
rejection was seen in the ghastly record of outrage and murder which
stained the following winter.
The Session of 1881 opened on the 6th of January. The speech from the
Throne announced two Irish Bills--one to reform the tenure of land, and
one to repress crime and outrage. The combination was stigmatized by Mr.
T. P. O'Connor as "weak reform and strong coercion"; and the same
vivacious orator, alluding to Mr. Chamberlain's supposed sympathy with
the Irish cause, taunted the Right Honourable gentleman with having had
"if not the courage of his convictions, at least the silence of his
shame."
The debate on the Address in the Commons lasted eleven nights, the
Irish Members moving endless amendments, with the avowed object of
delaying the Coercion Bill, which was eventually brought in by Forster
on the 24th January. The gist of the Bill was arrest on suspicion and
imprisonment without trial. The Irish Members fought it tooth and nail,
and were defied by Gladstone in a speech of unusual fire. "With fatal
and painful precision," he exclaimed, "the steps of crime dogged the
steps of the Land League; and it is not possible to get rid of facts
such as I have stated, by vague and general complaints, by imputations
against parties, imputations against England, or imputations against
Government. You must meet them, and confute them, if you can. None will
rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the
meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted, in the face of the
British House of Commons." The speech in which this tremendous
indictment was delivered attracted loud cheers from Liberals and
Conservatives alike, but stirred the Irish to fury. I remember Mr.
O'Connor saying to me, "If only Gladstone had been in opposition, how he
would have enjoyed tearing into shreds the statistics which he has just
quoted!" The resistance to the Bill became impassioned. The House sat
continuously from the afternoon of January 31st to the forenoon of
February 2nd. Members were divided, like miners, into Day-Shifts and
Night-Shifts. The Refreshment-Rooms at the House were kept open all
night, and we recruited our exhausted energies with grilled bones,
oysters, and champagne, and went to bed at breakfast-time. At 9.30 on
Wednesday morning, February 2nd, Mr. Speaker Brand, who had been absent
from the House for some hours, suddenly resumed the Chair, and, without
waiting for J. G. Biggar to finish his speech, put the question that
leave be given to bring in the Coercion Bill. The Irish raved and
stormed, and cried out against the Speaker's action as "a Breach of
Privilege." That it was not; but it was an unexpected and a salutary
revolution. When questioned, later in the day, as to the authority on
which he had acted, the Speaker said, "I acted on my own responsibility,
and from a sense of my duty to the House." Thus was established,
summarily and under unprecedented circumstances, that principle of
Closure which has since developed into an indispensable feature of
Parliamentary procedure.
The Session as a whole was extremely dull. The Irish Land Bill was so
complicated that, according to common report, only three persons in the
House understood it, and they were Gladstone, the Irish Chancellor,[36]
and Mr. T. M. Healy. The only amusing incident was that on the 16th of
June, owing to the attendance of Liberal Members at Ascot Races, the
majority on a critical division fell to twenty-five. Having occupied the
whole Session, the Bill was so mangled by the House of Lords that the
best part of another year had to be spent on mending it. Meanwhile, the
Coercion Bill proved, in working, a total failure. Forster had averred
that the police knew the "Village Ruffians" who incited to crime, and
that, if only he were empowered to imprison them without trial, outrages
would cease. But either he did not lay hold of the right men, or else
imprisonment had no terrors; for all through the autumn and winter of
1881 agrarian crimes increased with terrible rapidity. In a fit of
desperation, Forster cast Parnell into prison, and Gladstone announced
the feat amid the tumultuous applause of the Guildhall. But things only
went from bad to worse, and soon there were forty agrarian murders
unpunished. Having imprisoned Parnell without trial, and kept him in
prison for six months, the Government now determined to release him, in
the hope, for certainly there was no assurance, that he would behave
like a repentant child who has been locked up in a dark cupboard, and
would use his influence to restore order in Ireland. Dissenting, as well
he might, from this policy, Forster resigned. His resignation was
announced on the 2nd of May. That evening I met Gladstone at a party,
and, in answer to an anxious friend, he said: "The state of Ireland is
very greatly improved." Ardent Liberals on both sides of the Channel
shared this sanguine faith, but they were doomed to a cruel
disappointment. On the 6th of May, the Queen performed the public